Riverdale High School (Portland, Oregon)
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Riverdale High School is the high school for the small but well-funded Riverdale School District in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area.
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[edit] History
The school was established under controversial circumstances. Founded in 1996 the first controversy arose because the school was created in the early 1990s to avoid having the district's century-old grade school affected by new statewide laws promoting consolidation. In 2001, controversy continued, as the district asked voters to allow a permanent site be built for the school at a location outside of the district's boundaries. This was at a time when the high school had only 100 students, 30 of whom were actually district residents.
[edit] The search for a permanent site
The school struggled to find a permanent site. After two failed attempts at establishing a permanent location, the school finally found a site, but it was outside the district boundaries. A deal was made with the neighborhood community, Collins View, that controlled such things as the number of parking spaces, the times people could enter and leave the school, and a requirement to build a playground and use the school as a community center for the community.
In the fall of 2002, Riverdale received the Columbia Montessori School as its permanent site. The school has since been remodeled and added on to. Now Riverdale High School is thriving as a small school excelling in the arts, theater, science, history and law. The school is part of the Coalition of Essential Schools and takes pride in its alternative ways of teaching and often incorporates many subjects. Riverdale and Lincoln High School often top the list on Portland-area annual achievement tests.
[edit] Riverdale as a Linux Pioneer
Riverdale High School uses the Linux operating system on over 100 computers powered by K12LTSP. The school installed new thin-client workstations when it opened in 2002. K12LTSP was developed at Riverdale and was released under the GPL license in 2001. K12LTSP is based on the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) and is now used by schools all over the world. Fittingly, the Riverdale school system counts the children of Linus Torvalds among its students.
